KFC’s Secret Recipe: Rainforest Destruction

No matter what you think about fast food, you’ll no doubt agree that rainforests shouldn’t be trashed to make packaging destined for the trash. But that’s exactly what’s happening. Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) is supplying KFC with packaging products that are made from Indonesia’s rainforests.

The original Colonel Sanders couldn’t have imagined the company he founded in 1930 would be driving rainforest destruction half a world away from where he started it in Kentucky, USA.

But a new Greenpeace International report, ‘How KFC is Junking the Jungle’ shows just that. Thorough supply chain research and forensic testing has revealed how KFC is buying paper products made from rainforest fibre, supplied by APP - the parent company of NZ Cottonsoft toilet paper brand. APP sources rainforest logs from the habitat of the endangered Sumatran tiger. Last week the company made what it claimed were 'new commitments' to protect forests. In reality it will still continue to rely on rainforest clearance.

Today Greenpeace is launching a global campaign to persuade KFC and parent company Yum! to clean up their act by cutting rainforest destruction out of their supply chains. To kick things off we’ve released a new video showing the Colonel freak out as his famous secret recipe is finally revealed. Watch it here.

Meanwhile activists at the KFC headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky have also given executives a wake up call they couldn’t ignore as they arrived for work this morning. A giant banner with a Sumatran tiger has been placed on the front pillars of the KFC headquarters reading: “KFC Stop Trashing My Home.” The building, nicknamed “the White House” because of its resemblance to the US Presidential residence, looks out on a lake where another team of activists deployed another banner to hundreds of Yum! Brand employees with a similar message.

KFC and Yum have done the least of any of the top fast food companies to rid their supply chain of rainforest destruction, ignoring the evidence and dragging their feet for years as we and others have tried to get them to change their sourcing. If endangered animals like the Sumatran tiger are to survive in the wild, companies like KFC cannot continue to turn a blind eye to rainforest destruction.

We know KFC and Yum! can do better. Help tell the Colonel that his secret recipe for rainforest destruction is ‘no good’. Right now people across the world, from Indonesia to China, Australia to America and around Europe are telling one of the world’s biggest fast food company that responsible companies don’t turn rainforests into trash.